Fractured vision and collective reluctance
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 02, 2014 -
While the Government of India embarks on an Eastward journey with repackaged initiatives in dealing with South East Asian countries since the unfolding of its Look East Policy, the Northeastern States seem to be caught in amnesia with a near absolute silence on a joint initiative based on its collective historical strength.
While there are States working overtime to enhance limited strategies on joining the forces marching eastward, most observers are aware of the palpable divide between the hills and the valleys and also take cognisance of the economic, political and social differences.
Much of the region’s history is based on conflict of interests between the communities inhabiting the newly demarcated territories based on the cartography of convenience since the colonial times.
However, few have taken serious note of the fact that these differences had also been triggered and further deepened by policies markedly segregated between the uplands and the lowlands.
While the lowlands with relatively settled economy and claims to distinct civilizational ontology have been able to imitate at least the notion of governance as rolled on by India following the footsteps of Modern Nation States to some extent, the socio-political imageries of the uplands literally emerged out of a phase in history where communities were made to choose between two paths which they never charted nor envisioned earlier.
Till today, both the concept and the mechanism of leveraging development had been shaped by what the Government of India envisages for the region.
While making efforts to decentralize certain key components of spurring development in the region, most policy frameworks have been either shaped or chiselled according to what is considered the correct path for the interest of India.
Along the way, policy pundits had developed a make-shift vision meant for a region termed as the Northeast notwithstanding local dynamics.
It is this make-shift vision which has forged a new “topography of collective development” under a region loosely understood as the Northeast.
When such manoeuvres take precedence over the actual socio-political dynamics of the region, one of the many possible ways to counter it positively is to build a collective regional vision quite distinct from the promises one gets to hear during the five yearly ritual of electoral exercise.
This is time to shed collective reluctance and let the cynics be demonized for fractured vision.
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